Book Review: The Dethronement of Truth - Von Hildebrand’s Prophetic Message
Author: Member of the NYYRC History Committee
Background:
Conservative and faith-based student groups are struggling to counter the dominant progressive culture on college campuses, often lacking exposure to foundational thinkers and objective moral truths. In response, the Student Caucus and History Committee are collaborating to provide educational resources, speakers, and programming that promote conservative and faith-based values.
Dietrich von Hildebrand’s The Dethronement of Truth is a recommended reading for these efforts, offering insight into the crisis of objective truth in modern culture. This review introduces von Hildebrand’s work as part of a broader initiative to equip students for thoughtful engagement, with more to come at the upcoming NYYRC speaker event in fall 2025.
Book Review:
In today's society, we are facing attacks on fundamental truths and natural law. There is a permeating theme of relativism and subjectivism that has enveloped our culture. It has appeared in many forms, but its challenge has focused on what constitutes the uniqueness of an individual and the relationship with society at large. In a theological context, it draws into immediate conflict with the First Commandment and elevates “strange gods” before the one true God. Narrowly put, the “strange gods” are the problem of embracing narcissism and acting as our own masters without recourse to following the objective path to truth represented by Christ. As our own masters, we fall into the vice of attempting to grasp the “forbidden fruit” of “playing God” in seeking ultimate power and direction. This disordered curiosity of attempting to act in the domain of the divine began with original sin. The renowned lay Catholic and Jesuit-inspired educator and ethical philosopher, Dietrich von Hildebrand, addressed this issue and warned of the threat that loomed on the horizon during his notable years as an educator at Fordham University, from 1942 to 1960, and his distinguished career as an author. He also taught at the University of Munich, the University of Vienna, and the Catholic University of Toulouse during the time Hitler was emerging in Europe. We can internalize and apply in today’s discourse many of his potent points on these issues that are summarized in his work, The Dethronement of Truth. The lessons in this work challenge the current mainstream societal inclination of rejecting God’s natural divine plan for mankind.
Specifically, he addresses the problems posed by Communism and Nazism (National Socialism) and explains very artfully how they are great deceptions and fail to embrace objective truth. Both of these philosophies rely on a subjective view of what qualifies as moral and good, without attribution to the sole source of all truth, God, and the virtues and fruits that flow from developing a relationship with Him. These philosophies place primary importance on secular power structures governing humanity and impose preferences in the world to achieve their own aims. When relativism seeps into the course of daily routine, what follows is, at best, a lackadaisical approach to considering truth, and at worst, a cold indifference to it. Once the solid foundation of an objective moral compass in the divine deteriorates to the point of not being understood as the path to follow on life’s journey, illusionary principles successfully replace this foundation in the minds and hearts of the populace.
In the modern era, a recent concern is the issue of gender. Many secondary schools and schools of higher education in our nation, without hesitation, “educate” on the importance of fluidity and how there does not need to be rigid understandings of what constitutes sex and gender. We can be the “masters” of our biological genome and transition between both “roles” if we are dissatisfied with our current state in life. This method of thinking endangers the populace’s moral composition and draws them into conflict with the aforementioned First Commandment by placing strange gods before God. The strange gods are ourselves and the belief that we can assume God’s power in dictating the unique personal biological compositions of our nature. If we embrace Von Hildebrand’s method and reject this fractured and subjective view of our nature, we can point our lives in the direction of fully embracing our relationship with God and allowing the sole path paved by Him to be our guidepost to always follow His objective truth. We reject the secular detours that take us farther from Him. We are mortal creatures in the physical world, with all its limitations and pressures to engage in self-gratifying and sinful behavior. However, the sole path God sets forth is one of an immortal nature, one that is not complete at the end of our earthly life but continues on into the afterlife. Von Hildebrand encourages us to recognize that when man willingly decides to follow an earthly path and the secular context, he will eventually find himself beset by inconsistency.
Von Hildebrand was persistent in promoting this message and eloquently presented the dangers in speeches and in print associated with Communism and Socialism early on, prior to and during Hitler’s rise to power and the rise of the Soviet state. Specifically, with regards to Nazism he explains that Hitler’s dedication to the Nordic superiority view has no support in objective truth, but rather was an example of a manufactured perspective rooted in a distorted position of a man that rejected God. In regard to the Soviet state, he pointed to the distorted Soviet propaganda machine created by ruthless leaders to limit the freedoms and restrict the natural rights of the populace.
Von Hildebrand’s actions in boldly articulating God’s vision in the face of a dark Nazi movement that sought to silence him was laudatory and he was sentenced to death in absentia in Europe by the Nazis after he had fled their territory. He was a lion for Christ, and we will continue to apply his lessons in the modern day to address the crisis of disordered moral initiatives that have diverted society from the pursuit of objective moral truth in God. The Dethronement of Truth presents viable antidotes to address the issues faced in the present day, and we encourage you to pick up a copy to deepen your knowledge.
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